OCZ had been strangely absent from the last round of our memory reviews. They did not have a product that was really quite the same as the excellent “Universal” Corsair 4000 PRO or Mushkin 4000 High Performance. That did not, however, mean they were not working on products in the same category. We heard OCZ would release a DDR533 “Universal” memory, and today, OCZ announces that new product — OCZ 4200EL.

We had seen a late Beta sample of the new 4200EL, and AnandTech was told these were identical to the release version. A few days ago, the release DIMMs and information showed up announcing that they would be released on October 14th. We also had a chance to compare them to late beta samples, and we did, in fact, find the performance virtually identical. This means that you should find performance of your Retail chips almost the same as we found in our retail samples.

PC4200 means an official rating of DDR533 and the rated timings are 2.5-4-4-7 at 2.7V. Like other recent high-end OCZ memory, the DIMMs are warranted up to 3.0V for overclocking. OCZ also tells us that this new memory will run at CAS2 at DDR400, which would make the OCZ the 3rdand fastest “Universal” memory.

Our testing confirms that OCZ 4200EL is another Universal High-Speed DIMM like the Mushkin 4000 High Performance and Corsair XMS4000PRO we recently tested. What we mean by Universal High-Speed is that the memory is very competitive at DDR500, but that it also performs at DDR400 with aggressive CAS2 timings. Early DDR500 does well at the high end, but at DDR400, you are often stuck with CAS2.5 or CAS3 timings, which perform poorly compared to the fast DDR400 modules.

What's more, the OCZ 4200EL is the Highest Speed Rated DIMMs that we have tested at AnandTech, and easily surpasses the performance of the best performing memory tested so far.

This is the first DIMM pair that we have received from OCZ in their new packaging. The new package is certainly easier to identify than the generic DIMM boxes that OCZ has used in the past. It also looks almost the same as Corsair's new packaging.

You can see that OCZ uses the Copper Heat-Spreader on 4200EL. We did remove the Heat-Spreader to find the chips are labeled OCZ. They are apparently blanks that are purchased by OCZ and labeled as OCZ chips. Performance behavior makes us believe they are a variant of Hynix Rev. B chips, except they clock higher than we have yet seen with Hynix Rev. B memory chips. It also appears that OCZ may be using a new PCB with this memory, since it is a bit different from PCB's recently seen on OCZ DIMMs.

OCZ also includes a Case Badge for those who want to advertise that they are using top OCZ memory in their computer.

OCZ 4200EL Specifications

OCZ 4200EL Memory Specifications

Number of DIMMs & Banks

2 DS

DIMM Size Total Memory

512 Mb1 GB

Rated Timings

2.5-4-4-7 at DDR533

Rated Voltage

2.7VMaximum Voltage 3.0V

OCZ tests performance of OCZ 4200EL on Asus and Abit Intel 865/875 motherboards. While compatibility tests are run on other motherboards, these popular boards are used for Production Line testing. OCZ states that Memory is tested at DDR400, 433, 466, 500 and 533.

Post Your Comment

45 Comments

As detailed in the review, the CPU is our standard for high-FSB memory testing, a 2.4C (800FSB). This CPU runs at default CPU voltage to about 290 on the P4C800-E, and can go to a bit over 300 (1200FSB) at 1.6V. At 280, the CPU was running near 3.4GHz at DDR560 memory at default CPU voltage.Reply

I don't care about timings. People who obsess over latency are, again, uninformed.

And I don't hold anything against OCZ or anyone else for marketing this stuff. They are businesses, and businesses exist for the sole purpose of making money. Making money at any point in the DRAM chain is very hard right now, so if they can entice suckers to pay outrageous sums for the products then that is what they will do. But supposedly unbiased reviewers are supposed to point these things out. Some sites did. AT did not.Reply

#25why don't you try to overclock the best ddr400 to ddr560. you can loosen the timing. you can give the memory 3.3+ voltage. and you know what i doubt if u can get any close to ddr500. and btw i believe 3.5ns and 5ns makes a hell lot of difference. ohh, i forgot thej are remarked 5ns chips. and one more thing basic micro economics evri company tries to deferenciate their products so it can sell them on a premium price. just like mercides - u can find better quality cars much cheper - and there is still people paying a hell lot of money to drive a mercides. product defferenciation! Reply

#25why don't you try to overclock the best ddr400 to ddr560. you can loosen the timing. you can give the memory 3.3+ voltage. and you know what i doubt if u can get any close to ddr500. and btw i believe 3.5ns and 5ns makes a hell lot of difference. ohh, i forgot thej are remarked 5ns chips. and one more thing basic micro economics evri company tries to deferenciate their products so it can sell them on a premium price. just like mercides - u can find better quality cars much cheper - and there is still people paying a hell lot of money to drive a mercides. product defferenciation! Reply

Personally im pretty damned impressed with it. OCZ are fast approaching DDR600 - something Id never have thought would happen by the end of this year. Only 12 months ago everyone was limited to around DDR470 - thats great work in my view. Its showing progression. Early DDR400 had crappy timings too - given time thsi stuff will mature and we will see the latencies start to fall.

PCs live in a world of gradual improvement. You have to look at the 5% improvement in perspective. 5% of a lot is still a lot afterall. You all seem to be complaining that youre not seeing sudden huge leaps in performance. Well thats fine, youre all welcome to sit there with your pcs, not change a thing for 2 years then buy a whole new rig and get your 50% speed improvement. Thats not what memory and other components like this are made for. Theyre made for people who want the best and are willing to pay for the best. Afterall you only get a 5% improvement going from a radeon 9700 pro to a 9800XT on most high end systems - you dont see people bitching about that. All those little 5%'s add up. 5% faster cpu, 5% faster gfx, 5% faster memory gives you a 15% speed boost. Sure its not cheap, but the best never is.

Open your eyes and stop getting stuck in yesterday. The days of low latency memory are gone and wont be coming back any time soon. For any sort of progression to be made people need to stop crying about timings and start looking at performance figures. In my view a 5% increase just from swapping a couple of sticks of ram is good.

This pointless whining about manufacturers is starting to grate a bit too. Look what OCZ have done in the past year and tell me if theyre producing rubbish good? On the weight of the 3700 Gold alone they couldve ended the year happy, but they seem to be going hell for leather to break DDR600 too, so I say good luck to them.

Could you tell me for this memory (and for future "universal" memory) the maximum speed at CAS 2? I ask this because the agressive PAT settings (street racer and F1 on my ABIT IC7-G mobo) will only run at CAS 2.Reply